A lecture I gave to the Crash retrievals conference in Las Vegas on the Gary Mckinnon hacking and extradition situation.

A very comprehensive look at who Gary is, his family background and his interest in UFOs which has family connections to UFO experiences. i then go into the methods used in hacking and the over reacting US government response to this situation. Also discussed are other hackers who I have met and a global security overview.

The search for proof of the existence of UFOs landed Gary McKinnon in a world of trouble.After allegedly hacking into NASA websites -- where he says he found images of what looked like extraterrestrial spaceships -- the 40-year-old Briton faces extradition to the United States from his North London home. If convicted, McKinnon could receive a 70-year prison term and up to $2 million in fines....read more

http://droidzilla.blogspot.com/ Video credit: Whitehouse.gov - U.S. and British authorities are working to resolve the long-delayed extradition of a London hacker who allegedly infiltrated American military computers.

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say they discussed the case during their White House meeting Tuesday and intend to work together to find an appropriate solution.

Gary McKinnon allegedly broke into 97 computers belonging to NASA, the Department of Defense and several branches of the military soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. McKinnon says he was looking for evidence of UFOs. Gary McKinnon is a Glasgow-born systems administrator and hacker who has been accused of what one US prosecutor claims is the "biggest military computer hack of all time, McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public.http://droidzilla.blogspot.com/

Friday, June 29, 2012

What is Tor?

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis

Internet and phone firms are preparing to instal "black boxes" to monitor UK internet and phone traffic, and decode encrypted messages - but the Home Office denies this includes bank transactions.

As part of the Home Office's communications data bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year.

The government has insisted that the actual content of messages won't be stored, but until now it has not been clear how communications companies will be able to separate content from "header data", such as the sender and recipient of a message, and the date it was sent.

It has now emerged that the Home Office has held meetings with the UK's largest ISPs and mobile network operators, and has given them information about the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.

When an individual uses a webmail service such as Gmail, for example, the entire webpage is encrypted before it is sent. This makes it impossible for ISPs to distinguish the content of the message. Under the Home Office proposals, once the Gmail is sent, the ISPs would have to route the data via a government-approved "black box" which will decrypt the message, separate the content from the "header data", and pass the latter back to the ISP for storage.Dominic Raab, a ConservativeMP who has criticised the bill, said: "The use of data mining and black boxes to monitor everyone's phone, email and web-based communications is a sobering thought that would give Britain the most intrusive surveillance regime in the west. But, many technical experts are raising equally serious doubts about its feasibility and vulnerability to hacking and other abuse."

A representative of the ISPs Association said: "We understand that government wants to move with the times, and we want to work with them on that. But this is a massive project. We'd rather they told us what they want to achieve, then sit down with us to work out how."

"Our other main concern with this is speed. If you're having to route all traffic through one box, it's going to cut down on connection speeds. The hardware can only look at a certain amount of traffic per second - if lots of streams from the BBC iPlayer are going through it, for example, how is it going to handle the traffic?"

A Home Office spokesman said -

"We have not issued any hardware or software specifications.

"The communications data bill is designed to allow the police to maintain their capability to catch criminals and protect the public as technology changes and people use more modern communications. Under this programme the emphasis is to work with industry to determine the best way to achieve this.

"The legislation is currently being scrutinised by parliament. Once it has been passed will we work with companies on how to best collect and store communications data, but not the content, such as the detail of bank transactions."

The United States and Israel jointly developed the Flame virus, which collected intelligence for a cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear program. This has been confirmed by a number of Western officials familiar with classified data on the effort.

­The CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Israeli military were all involved in developing malware to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the officials confirmed.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” noted one official, as quoted by The Washington Post. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Experts say Flame was designed to replicate even on highly secure networks. It allowed its creators to monitor the infected computer, activate microphones and cameras, take screenshots, log keyboard strokes, extract geolocational data from images and send and receive commands via Bluetooth wireless technology.

The virus came to light last month, when Iran detected cyber-attacks on its Oil Ministry and oil export facilities. “The virus penetrated some fields — one of them was the oil sector,” Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian military official told the country’s state radio at that time. “Fortunately, we detected and controlled this single incident.”

Some US officials were unsatisfied with the attack. They say it was the result of a unilateral decision by Israel, which failed to consult its American partners on the move.

Russian cyber-security firm Kaspersky Lab, which branded the virus “Flame,” later discovered that parts of malware’s code were identical to that of Stuxnet, a virus the development of which the US government had previously been suspected by other officials tied with the cyber-sabotage program. Kaspersky Lab concluded that the same group was responsible for the creation of both viruses. “We are now 100 per cent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together,” said Roel Schowenberg, a senior researcher for the company. ...read more

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Is Twitter allowing too much freedom? What helped move revolutions along in the Middle East, has a flip side of cyberbullying and abuse, especially of those in the spotlight. Now Twitter is taking its first step towards censorship.

The news was broken by Twitter’s Dick Costolo who was speaking to the Financial Times. As the FT put it, the site’s chief executive “became visibly emotional” as he described his frustration in tackling the problem of ‘horrifying’ abuse, while maintaining the company’s mantra that ‘tweets must flow’. Anonymous and unpunished, irresponsible twitter-users find the site ideal for expressing all kinds of extremist, racist and sexistopinions. Celebrities are among those most vulnerable, with curses and bullying clogging up their ‘@connect’ section, offending many and disrupting conversations, often turning them into hate-fights.

To stop the ‘hate speech’ anarchy, Twitter is considering starting off by blocking the very possibility of replies from so-called ‘non-authoritative’ users, marked out by the absence of a profile picture, followers or bio information, as FT.com reports. This is the first step, but there might be more to come....read more

Thursday, June 21, 2012

"Destroying ACTA would give us some breathing space by creating a political symbol of global importance: the Internet, in all its diversity, winning a global political battle against some of the most powerful industries and governments," Jeremie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of the citizen advocacy groupLa Quadrature du Net told RT....read more

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I hereby request thefollowing information from and regarding the Rt Hon Theresa May MP(Con), Secretary of State for the Home Department (the "HomeSecretary"):

1) The projected cost to the taxpayer (calculated or estimated -whichever is available) of implementing the Government's proposednew legislation regarding extending the use of communications databy the police and security services.

2) The date, time, and recipient of every email sent by the HomeSecretary over the last 12 months.

3) The date, time, and sender of every email received by the HomeSecretary over the last 12 months.

4) The date, time, and recipient of every internet telephony call(e.g. "Skype" call) made by the Home Secretary over the last 12months.

5) The date, time, and sender of every internet telephony call(e.g. "Skype" call) received by the Home Secretary over the last 12months.

6) The date, time, and recipient of every internet "chat" (e.g."Facebook" or "Windows Live Messenger") initiated by the HomeSecretary over the last 12 months.

7) The date, time, and sender of every internet "chat" (e.g."Facebook" or "Windows Live Messenger") received by the HomeSecretary over the last 12 months.

8) The date, time, and internet address (URL) of every websitevisited by the Home Secretary over the last 12 months.

Search engine company has said there has been a troubling increase in requests to remove political content from the internet

Over six months Google complied with 47% of requests for content removal and 65% of court orders. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features

There has been an alarming rise in the number of times governments attempted to censor the internet in last six months, according to a report from Google.

Since the search engine last published its bi-annual transparency report, it said it had seen a troubling increase in requests to remove political content. Many of these requests came from western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

It said Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles critical of public figures. It did not comply. In Poland, it was asked to remove an article critical of the Polish agency for enterprise development and eight other results that linked to the article. Again, the company did not comply.

Google was asked by Canadian officials to remove a YouTube video of a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. It refused.

Thai authorities asked Google to remove 149 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the monarchy, a violation of Thailand's lèse-majesté law. The company complied with 70% of the requests.

Pakistan asked Google to remove six YouTube videos that satirised its army and senior politicians. Google refused.

UK police asked the company to remove five YouTube accounts for allegedly promoting terrorism. Google agreed. In the US most requests related to alleged harassment of people on YouTube. The authorities asked for 187 pieces to be removed. Google complied with 42% of them.

In a blog post, Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, wrote: "Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not.

"This is the fifth data set that we've released. Just like every other time, we've been asked to take down political speech. It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

Over the six months covered by the latest report, Google complied with an average of 65% of court orders, as opposed to 47% of more informal requests.

Last month Google announced it was receiving more than one million requests a month from copyright owners seeking to pull their content from the company's search results.

"The UK's largest ISP, BT, has obeyed a court order to block The Pirate Bay, following similar moves by five other service providers, after complaints by music trade body BPI. The Pirate Bay says it can continue regardless through workarounds. From the article: 'BT has started blocking access to The Pirate Bay, becoming the sixth major ISP to prevent access to the file-sharing service. It follows blocks enforced by Orange, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and O2, after they all obeyed a court order made in April. BT, which has been in ongoing discussions with trade body the BPI over how it would carry out a block, had not been hit with such an order until this week.'"...read more

Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK’s Association of Police Officers.

The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material.

The firm said it terminated five accounts linked to the suspect videos.

However, the firm said it had rejected many other state’s requests for action.

Canada’s Passport Office was among the organisations rebuffed. It had asked for a video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and then flushing it down the toilet be removed.

Google also refused to delete six YouTube videos that satirised Pakistan’s army and senior politicians. The order had come from the government of Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology.

Free speech

But Google did act in hundreds of cases, including:

requests to block more than 100 YouTube videos in Thailand that allegedly insulted its monarchy – a crime in the countrythe removal of a YouTube video that contained hate speech that had been posted in Turkeythe termination of four YouTube accounts responsible for videos that allegedly contained threatening and harassing content after complaints by different US law enforcement agencies.

Overall, the firm said it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011. It said it had complied with 68% of the orders.

It added that it had received a further 546 informal requests covering 4,925 items, of which it had agreed to 43% of the cases.

Google’s senior policy analyst, Dorothy Chou, said the company was concerned by the amount of requests that had been linked to political speech.

“It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – Western democracies not typically associated with censorship,” she said.

“For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.

“In Poland, we received a request from the Agency for Enterprise Development to remove links to a site that criticised it.

The International Trade Committee (INTA) of the European Parliament (EP) is set to adopt its opinion report on ACTA, ahead of the EP’s July 3 vote. RT discussed the controversial act with digital rights expert Jeremie Zimmermann.

It is unclear whether INTA will endorse the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) or denounce it, as did three other committees of the European Parliament. It will become the fourth and final committee to deliver its report on the moot legislation, and will likely affect the EP’s vote.

Pro-ACTA politicians have been making their last-ditch effort to get the committee to approve the legislation. Karel de Gucht, the European Commission’s trade representative, spoke to INTA in an effort to persuade it to produce a favorable report. He is also opposed to holding a vote on the act until after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivers its verdict on the legality of the agreement.

Jeremie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net told RT that INTA was also likely to recommend that the vote be delayed. ..read more

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

With the recent unveiling of the newest Internet protocol system, trillions upon trillions of devices are being paved access to the Internet for the unforeseeable future. And right on cue, the FBI is already up in arms over IPv6.

With computing devices around the globe already switching from the current Internet protocol system, IPv4, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is predictably picking a fight with the biggest names in cyberspace to ensure that the FBI and other agencies across North America will be able to inch themselves into the personal Web surfing habits of citizens across the world. Now requests from the FBI to ready a system to easily snoop through Internet traffic has proponents of IPv6 and industry reps alike scrambling to make sense of the feds’ demands.

Under the original and quickly antiquating Internet protocol system, IPv4, only 4.3 billion computers, modems, smart phones and other wired devices can send and receive information through cyberspace. When the latest rollover to IPv6 is complete, however, 340 undecillion addresses (that’s a lot) will be able to be assigned. On the plus side, trillions of more devices will able to be delivered information over the Internet. The FBI, however, wants to make sure that they can still catch cyber criminals and suggest that they might have to insist that the private sector aids them in their future endeavors. ...read more

A critical Internet Explorer vulnerability, announced and patched by Microsoft in June'sPatch Tuesday, is being exploited in the wild.The vulnerability is CVE-2012-1875 (don't expect any detail - this link is just boilerplate stuff), patched in MS12-037.

SophosLabs has seen numerous attempts to exploit this vulnerability (Sophos products detect it as Exp/20121875-A). Cunningly-crafted JavaScript code - which can be embedded in a web page to foist the exploit on unsuspecting vistors - is circulating freely on the internet. Also, the Metasploit exploitation framework now has a plug-in module which will generate malicious JavaScript for you on-the-fly to help you automate an attack. (For authorised penetration testing and research purposes only, natch!)The vulnerability carries the resounding name of "Same ID Property Remote Code Execution Vulnerability", and is caused by memory mismanagement in Internet Explorer. ...read more

If you want to pay for sex in the United States — or offer sex services for a fee — and you’d rather not troll derelict city street corners late at night, chances are you’re going to use backpage.com.

Of course, Backpage’s adult classifieds are cloaked in the coy poetry of online sex advertising; you’re searching for an “escort” instead of a “prostitute” or a “full body sensual mutual touch” instead of something more crudely sexual. But recent studies from the Advanced Interactive Media Group (AIMG) cut through coyness to offer at least one blunt statistic: About 70 percent of the revenue generated from online sex transactions in the U.S. goes to Backpage. Last year, AIMG figured Backpage generated around $2 million in revenue every month from online sex sales.

To put it another way: The Village Voice Media-owned online classified ad service could be seen as the main source for online sex in the U.S.

And with Craigslist no longer offering sex services on any of its 700 sites around the world (Craigslist dropped its “adult classifieds” section in 2010), Backpage’s adult market share has nowhere to go but up.

But there’s a hitch. And that hitch not only threatens to put Backpage out of business. It also threatens to completely change the way websites handle third-party content....read more

But the Home Office said the bill would just maintain existing powers relating to postal data.And it stressed that only data about mail - not its contents - would be retained if the law was ever enacted.

Under the draft bill, the Royal Mail and other postal services could be asked to retain "anything written on the outside" of items for up to 12 months so they can be accessed by the police, security services and HM Revenue and Customs.

But a Home Office spokesman said only information relating to the "communications data of mail — who sent the letter to whom, when it was sent and the origin and destination" would, potentially, be stored.

'Snooper's charter'

Asked how the relevant data would be separated from the contents of postcards, for example, the spokesman said: "That would be something the postal services would need to address if they were requested to do so."

The spokesman added: "It does not cover the interception of contents, which will continue to be covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and require a warrant signed by the Secretary of State.

"In a very small number of cases, law enforcement or intelligence agencies might have to obtain the communications data of a suspect's mail, but there are currently no requirements to retain postal data and there are no plans for that to change.

"The new legislation will replace current powers relating to postal communications data. The Bill will ensure they are maintained."

Detail of all UK internet use will be stored for up to 12 months so that it can be accessed by the police, the security services and HM Revenue and Customs if the draft bill becomes law.

Records will include people's activity on social network sites, webmail, internet phone calls and online gaming.

It has been dubbed a "snooper's charter" by civil liberties groups but the Home Office says new powers are needed to keep pace with how criminals and terrorists are using new technology.

The Bill includes provision to help postal services and other communications providers with the cost of installing new equipment to comply with any laws, estimated to be £1.8bn over 10 years.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

In recent years, online tracking companies have begun to monitor our clicks, searches and reading habits as we move around the Internet. If you are concerned about pervasive online web tracking by behavioral advertisers, then you may want to enable Do Not Track on your web browser.

Do Not Track is unique in that it combines both technology (a signal transmitted from a user) as well as a policy framework for how companies that receive the signal should respond. As more and more websites respect the Do Not Track signal from your browser, it becomes a more effective tool for protecting your privacy.

EFF is working with privacy advocates and industry representatives through the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group to define standards for how websites that receive the Do Not Track signal ought to response in order to best respect consumer's choices.

The following tutorial walks you through the enabling Do Not Track in the four most popular browsers: Safari, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, and Chrome....read more

There are no terrorists threats, for if there were Cameron would have shown a great deal more concern for his daughter, you remember the one, Nancy, he along with his wife forgot she was with them as they enjoyed their boozy lunch a couple of months ago.

Why Anonymity Matters

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol...read more

Details of internet use in the UK will have to be stored for a year to allow police and intelligence services to access it, under government plans.

Records will include people's activity on social network sites, webmail, internet phone calls and online gaming.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the change was needed to keep up with how criminals were using new technology.

But senior Tory David Davis said it was "incredibly intrusive" and would only "catch the innocent and incompetent".

The Communications Bill is to be published in draft form on Thursday - but the government faces a battle to get it through Parliament intact, with Lib Dem MPs and Conservatives such as Mr Davis calling for it to be watered down or abandoned altogether.

Local authorities are likely to be stripped of their current powers to access phone call data in an effort to win over critics but the proposals have still been branded a "snooper's charter" by civil liberties campaigners.

Rachel Robinson, policy officer for Liberty, said: "It's good that local councils won't be able to watch the entire population but even law enforcement should be targeting suspects - not all citizens.

"Just like the internet, any private home can be a crime scene, but should we install hidden cameras and microphones in every bedroom in the land?"'Stopping terrorists'

Under current legislation, communications companies must keep phone records and information about messages sent via their own email services for 12 months.

“Start Quote

In the first instance, it is understood this could involve more than a dozen of the UK's biggest communications companies including BT, Virgin and Sky”

The new proposals would require UK communications companies to keep details of a much wider range of data including use of social network sites, webmail, voice calls over the internet, and gaming. Websites visited could be recorded, although pages within sites would not be.

Mrs May told BBC Breakfast: "It's not about the content, it's not about reading people's emails or listening to their telephone calls.

"This is purely about the who, when and where made these communications and it's about ensuring we catch criminals and stop terrorists."

The police and security services are concerned that criminals and terrorists are increasingly evading detection by using social media and online gaming sites to communicate with each other.

Officers would still need to obtain a warrant to gain access to the data.

But the government would be able to request any service provider to keep data about internet usage, although initially it will involve about a dozen firms including BT, Virgin and Sky.

'Total war'

The previous government was forced to abandon plans to store every citizen's internet data on a single, giant database following protests - and Mrs May says she has no plan to resurrect this idea.

“Start Quote

Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society”

Bernard Hogan-HoweMetropolitan Police commissioner

The proposals will be subject to scrutiny by a joint parliamentary committee before the legislative process begins in earnest.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, writing in the Times, said having greater powers to access data was essential in waging a "total war on crime" - and he warned that police risked losing the fight against crime unless MPs passed a law enabling them to collect more communications data.

He wrote: "Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society."

Tory backbencher David Davis, a former shadow home secretary who fought a by-election in the last Parliament on the issue of civil liberties, described the proposals as "incredibly intrusive".

He said the ban on local authority officials accessing data was "important but minor".He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If they really want to do things like this - and we all accept they use data to catch criminals - get a warrant. Get a judge to sign a warrant, not the guy at the next desk, not somebody else in the same organisation.

"The only people who will avoid this are the actual criminals, because there are ways around this - you use an internet cafe, you hack into somebody's wi-fi, you use what's called proxy servers, and they are just the easy ways."

Internet and phone companies will be forced to track email, Twitter, Facebook and other online data under new legislation.

Twitter and Facebook interaction is being targeted by new government legislation to give police and security services greater access to data. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features

The government is to offer a blank cheque to internet and phone firms that will be required to track everyone's email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use under legislation to be published on Thursday.

The Home Office has confirmed it will foot the bill, thought to run into tens and possibly hundreds of millions, for collecting and storing the extra social media and web browsing records needed to implement the scheme, which critics have dubbed an "online snooper's charter".

Ministers did not put a figure on the cost of the new scheme but said it would be far less than the £2bn price tag estimated when Labour put forward a web-tracking scheme based on a central Home Office database in 2006.

The Liberal Democrats are expected to scale back their criticism of the legislation, which is to be published in draft form on Thursday, after Nick Clegg's intervention secured a series of safeguards, including a scrutiny inquiry by MPs and peers that will report by the end of November.

But the measure is expected to continue to attract fierce criticism from libertarian Conservatives, led by the former shadow home secretary David Davis, who this week attacked it again, calling it "expensive, unnecessary and a huge invasion of everyone'sprivacy".

An onlinepetitionrun by the campaign group 38 degrees has already attracted more than 163,000 signatures under the slogan: "Our civil liberties have taken a battering in recent years from politicians of all backgrounds. Now it's time to for us to push back."

Tom Brake MP, co-chair of the Lib Dem home affairs committee, said the decision to publish the bill in draft meant there was now an opportunity to examine all its aspects before it was voted on in parliament.

Brake said there was no objection in principle to extending the capability of the police and security services to access communications data from emails, texts and mobile phones to Twitter, Facebook and other new forms of social media. But the party wanted assurances that it was technically possible to access the "who sent what to whom, when and where" traffic data without accessing content – a point about which there is much debate.

Brake said they wanted to see the list of state agencies who could not access such personal data without a warrant extended to cover bodies such as the Food Standards Agency.

He said he also wanted to know what proportion of the 500,000 requests for communications data already made each year successfully contributed to investigations and whether it was possible to reduce the volume.

The safeguards secured by Clegg include the joint scrutiny committee of MPs and peers, who will hear expert evidence, including that from the Home Office, and examine all aspects to ensure the measure is not "rammed through parliament". It has already been quietly agreed that the committee should report by the end of November, implying a timetable that could see the measure on the statute book within 12 months.

It is also expected that inquiries into the bill will be mounted by parliament's intelligence and security and home affairs committees before it emerges in its final form.

Other safeguards to be detailed in the draft bill are a "case-by-case" oversight by the interception of the communications surveillance commissioner, the publication of a privacy impact statement, and powers for the information commissioner to ensure the stored data is kept secure then destroyed when the 12-month retention period expires.

Individuals who feel they have been subject to unlawful tracking will be able to complain to a panel of senior judges in the investigatory powers tribunal.

It will also remain the case that the police and security services will not be allowed to access the content of emails, texts, mobile calls and other confidential web use, without a warrant signed by the home secretary.

The communications data police and others may seek about an individual includes email addresses and phone numbers of people who have been in contact, when this happened, and where, the details giving the police records of suspects' associates and activities.

Internet and phone companies are already required to give the police and security services access to the communications data they retain for their own billing and business purposes. But the Home Office states that the rapidly changing nature of the net, including the widespread use of social media that is not billed item by item, means that this power is no longer sufficient for tracking the activities of criminals online.

Officials say that 25% of requests for communications data by the police and security agencies can no longer be met.

The legislation to be published today will break new legal ground in requiring internet and phone companies to collect this new communications data and not just pass on data they already retain.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Two leading opponents of SOPA are taking their fight for Internet freedoms to a whole new level. This time a team of bi-partisan lawmakers are offering a Digital Bill of Rights to help ensure that Americans continue to have an open Internet.

“I believe that individuals possess certain fundamental rights,” Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) writes on his website this week. “Government should exist to protect those rights against those who would violate them. That is the revolutionary principle at the heart of the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. No one should trample our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's why the Bill of Rights is an American citizen's first line of defense against all forms of tyranny.”

Rep. Issa’s proposal has been drafted along with the help of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who together have taken on the issue of Internet rights on Capitol Hill countless times, particularly in recent months when they championed an effort to abolish the Stop Online Piracy Act , or SOPA. While the two lawmakers are split on some issues, such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) currently being considered in Washington, they both agree that the Internet rights of Americans needs to be protected during a day and age when lawmakers — especially those that are misinformed — are fighting for online regulations that could essentially eliminate freedom on the Web.

"Government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics," Rep. Issa explains on his site. “We have a rare opportunity to give government marching orders on how to treat the Internet, those who use it and the innovation it supports."Along with Wyden, Issua has done exactly that by publishing the just-penned Digital Bill of Rights. And like many historic American documents, the two lawmakers are looking for help in drafting a completed version of their proposal. “I need your help to get this right,” writes Issa, “so I published it here in Madison for everyone to comment, criticize and collaborate. I look forward to hearing from you and continuing to work together to keep the web open.”Speaking from New York City on Monday, Sen. Wyden said that Congress indeed someday crumble the Web as we know it and called for "changing power in Washington, DC." In an unusual example of a bi-partisan project getting off the ground quickly, their call for chance is already being widely circulated on the Web:

The Digital Bill of Rights:

1) The right to a free and uncensored Internet.2) The right to an open, unobstructed Internet.3) The right to equality on the Internet.4) The right to gather and participate in online activities.5) The right to create and collaborate on the Internet.6) The right to freely share their ideas.7) The right to access the Internet equally, regardless of who they are or where they are8) The right to freely associate on the Internet9) The right to privacy on the Internet10) The right to benefit from what they create